The bicyclists, transportation planners and others who attended a national summit on Monday in Minneapolis discussed dozens of small and big changes to improve bike safety. The stakes are high, because many people living in cities won’t ride because they don’t feel safe.

Below is a list of five of the ideas discussed during the summit, which was organized by the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Texting was a major complaint bicyclists at the conference had. Chris Budel of St. Paul bikes every day and said he had seen drivers texting four out of the last seven days. He’s confronted drivers about it. “They’re not apologetic at all,” he said. “They just get defensive.

Andy Clarke of the League of American Bicyclists received applause for his comment that texting is “the scourge that threatens to undermine everything the traffic safety community has done in the last 50 years.”

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration head David Strickland said federal officials are working on the issue. Minnesota and 38 other states have texting bans. But he reminded everyone that enforcement isn’t enough &mdash; a cultural change is needed, which can take time.

Federal officials’ efforts to get people to wear seat belts and stop driving drunk has gone on for more than 30 years, he said.

Protected lanes, or “green lanes”:

A bike lane painted on a street sometimes isn’t enough. A “green lane” separates bicyclists from motor vehicles with some kind of physical barrier. Six cities &mdash; Chicago, San Francisco, Portland, Ore.; Memphis, Tenn.; Washington, D.C. and Austin, Texas &mdash; are part of a new project that is constructing the lanes and testing their use.

Although Minneapolis is not one of the first six cities in the project, city officials say the concept is coming soon to West 36th Street near Lake Calhoun and Broadway Avenue in northeast Minneapolis.

Speakers at the conference agreed that law enforcement officials should be issuing more tickets to both bicyclists and motorists for not following the rules of the road.

Three Rivers Park Police Officer Danny McCullough told the group about his experience writing tickets to cyclists who fail to stop at stop signs along the trail system. The agency targeted the most dangerous intersections, and said the enforcement campaign caused more bicyclists to comply.

But McCullough said efforts must include education. He hands out a card listing all the bike safety laws every time he issues a bicyclist a citation or warning.

“We could write tickets all day long. It’s only part of the solution,” he said.

Reduce speed on city streets:

Clarke, of the League of American Bicyclists, noted a campaign in the United Kingdom to reduce speed limits on city streets to 20 mph. (It’s 30 mph on most city streets in Minnesota.)

Other speakers suggested other ways to reduce speed on certain streets, such as by adding traffic roundabouts and “advisory” bike lanes that signal to motorists that they might have to share the road with a cyclist.

Minneapolis and several other cities have also created bike boulevards that can have speed humps and special pavement markings to slow motorists down.

Mandatory helmet laws:

Some states have required bicycle helmet use for children, and some cities, like Seattle, require helmets for all riders. (Minnesota has no mandatory helmet law for bicyclists.)

Some of the summit speakers criticized the Seattle law for discouraging people from bicycling and pointed out that the helmet law is the reason the city doesn’t have a bike share program like other bike friendly cities.

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you”ll have to get all the cyclists who don’t follow the rules on board with your ideas. There are as many “bad” bikers as there are drivers.

Scott

Perhaps. And perhaps there are as many “bad” walkers as there are bikers and drivers. It’s just that drivers are the ones killing people and destroying property.

winoceros

Very mad that useful thoroughfares, Park Ave, Cedar Ave, for example, where tax dollars were appropriated to wide the roads over the years to help traffic move easily in a city where there are short blocks and lots of turn-on/turn-off traffic, have been summarily pirated, stealing a whole lane for use by maybe a hundred people a day.

Note that the goal is not to add bicycle lanes: it is to remove lanes for cars so driving becomes inconvenient. It is to “protect” neighborhoods and certain blocks from traffic, as if the residents on these streets have the right to restrict traffic from their special little blocks. The goal is a “smart” city, one where someone else decides which thoroughfares are convenient for you, instead of you deciding which thoroughfare is convenient.

If you want the state to pay for roads that go by your homes, you cannot then get the city to restrict the lanes from use. These lanes bring workers and goods to and from your city. Tired of biking uber alles. Not fair to vast majority of non bikers who pay for the roads.

Jennifer, South Mpls resident

I use the bike lanes on Park Ave to bike to work almost every day. The buffered bike lanes make me feel much more comfortable biking on the street and I absolutely love my commute now. When I do drive my car, I join the many other motorists who are also still able to use Park to get where they’re going. With 35W nearby, we don’t need Park Avenue to be the urban highway it became in the 1950s. Adding bike lanes as part of a planned restriping/resurfacing project is a very cost effective way to make an existing road usable for even more people. And streets ARE for everyone–people on bikes, in cars, walking, and living in the neighborhood.

J Wake

If you think you’ve been paying for roads you haven’t been reading the news lately.